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Bring the Rain

There’s an saying in blogging; the most important thing too keep in mind about blogging is that you have to keep blogging.

The weather in Seattle has been spectacular; the late summer and early fall have just been warm and stunningly gorgeous. This town really is beautiful.

Unfortunately, for those of us who are from here, the nice weather is a debilitating condition; it’s very distracting for native northwesterners, like me. We have a very hard time concentrating… even staying at work… when the weather is like this.

I had a long, hot summer in Taipei, which immunized me to a certain extent. The hardest part for me is that I teach in a classroom that gets pretty hot. The English and History teachers that use my room in the morning both made exasperated comments to me, asking how can I stand it?! (*coughwimps*)

How do I stand it? I open up all the windows, even the ones I have to stand on a chair to open. The maintenance staff refuses every year to give me the pole to open those… I think it’s because they don’t know where to find it. Anyway, I actually found a pole to open those with… and then realized it’s easier to climb up anyway.

I also have a secret Filipino solution for my students… I bought a bunch of handheld fans. I found the first batch at the Filipino store at Pike Place, but then I found cheaper (and more attractive) ones at Cost Plus.

You should have seen when I first offered them to people; the students were all like, no, we are way too cool to fan ourselves; gross. Fast forward to a few days later, and some of the girls had adopted them, especially when the pattern matched their outfits. Fast forward to today, when boys are getting to class early so they can grab a fan, leaving none for the girls, who roll in a little later. The boys don’t care, either, if they grab a pink fan or a delicate flower fan; they’re happy to use them. Today they even started taping up the broken ones.

They also enjoy doing all the dramatic fan moves.

One thing is for sure: they definitely learned the word… el abanico.

Of course the weather will turn colder within a matter of weeks, and then the rains will come. We had a hint of rain the other day and I for one was excited, and so were my friends on facebook. I remember the first time I felt relief that the rains had returned; it was the summer of 1989 and my friend called me and we both expressed a secret pleasure that regular weather had come back.

Of course the California transplants get all pouty and we have to listen to them start harrumphing about gray skies. Later, when the snow days come, the east coast and midwesterners will start jawing at everyone they see, about their awesome mastery of that disgusting and unnecessary solid precipitation… hooray for you.

Anyway, the point is, I welcome the cooler weather and the rain. If it weren’t for the rain, it would only be a matter of time before my classroom turned into this.